Shower New York's visitors in sunshine, not sewage

TRAVEL WARNING: Plastic bins were set up to catch a sewage leak in Penn Station— just one of many recent problems confronting commuters.

When raw sewage began leaking through a ceiling in Penn Station—that wreck of a transit hub sitting under the bowels of Madison Square Garden—Patrick O'Brien looked over the giant plastic bins wheeled in to catch the effluent and said, "I'm just glad it's between Rangers games."

O'Brien is the owner of Tracks Bar and Grill, whose customers had to duck under the yellow caution tape around the foul-smelling mess to reach his establishment, according to a report in Time Out New York. It takes a New Yorker's sense of humor to tolerate a place like Penn Station, but the problems there are no laughing matter.

Some 600,000 commuters, tourists and other travelers endure Penn Station's awfulness every day. If it's not wayward fecal matter, it's defective tracks or something else causing major delays. Cramped platforms and concourses, packs of humanity moving like dense schools of fish, confusing or missing signage, noise and other annoyances are a daily reality. Even at its best, Penn Station is the worst.

Yes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a multibillion-dollar face-lift of Penn in the works. But a cosmetic procedure will not cure this patient. Penn Station needs open-heart surgery, which requires the removal of Madison Square Garden and the intrusive columns that support it. The governor has the gravitas to do this and, just as important, the leverage: The arena's 10-year operating permit expires in 2023. It would not be easy, but given that Cuomo has mockingly characterized the excuse that Mayor Bill de Blasio once gave for not closing Rikers Island as "it's too hard", he could hardly employ that rationale for letting a sports arena perpetually smother the primary gateway to the city.

A complete overhaul of Penn Station would dovetail nicely with the Gateway project planned by the agencies that use Penn Station. Gateway includes a new tunnel between the station and New Jersey, so it makes sense to integrate the two projects.

Money will be an issue, of course. The funding picture got cloudier when President Donald Trump proposed hollowing out the grant program being counted on for the federal contribution to Gateway. But the president has shown a great capacity for changing his mind, and the prospect of unveiling a massive real estate and infrastructure project in his hometown would be a strong inspiration for him to do so. New York officials could sweeten the deal for Trump with a public-private partnership to manage Penn Station as a customer-friendly enterprise. Travelers to the city should be showered in sunshine, not sewage. — THE EDITORS

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